Dirge
by Expecting Rain
Summary: A collection of oneshots about the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, focusing on characters who are mourning people they really shouldn’t be mourning – or at least that’s what they tell themselves. Chapter One: Ginny grieves for Tom Riddle.
1. Ginny

_A/N: This will be a collection of oneshots about the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, focusing on characters who are mourning people they really shouldn't be mourning – or at least that's what they tell themselves. Meaning: Major angst ahead!_

_This is something I'm doing on a whim as I'm working on a much longer story, the first chapter of which should be up soon! (Hopefully within a week, but definitely by the end of the month)._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Bob Dylan (I named this story after his song "Dirge," which I think fits the theme pretty well. If you like Bob Dylan I'd recommend giving it a listen)._

_Oh, and please review. I'm open to suggestions about who I should write about. So far, besides Ginny, I've written Luna and Narcissa, and have ideas for Andromeda and Neville, but if you have someone you'd like me to write about, tell me in a review. Be sure to say who they'd be grieving for._

* * *

**Dirge**

"_I hate myself for loving you and the weakness that it showed."_

_-Dirge, Bob Dylan_

**Chapter One: Ginny**

She tells her mum she's going to look for Harry and Ron and Hermione in Gryffindor Tower, and she means to go there, really she does, but her feet lead her somewhere else entirely and before she knows it she is standing on the damp stone floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The bathroom is empty – Myrtle must be celebrating in the Great Hall with the rest of the ghosts, hard as it is to imagine Myrtle celebrating.

The broken mirrors, the molding walls, the damp floor – compared with the rest of the castle, Myrtle's bathroom is in pristine shape. She hasn't been here since her first year, so she doesn't know where that new crack in the mirror came from or how the far stall lost its hinges, but this small, battered bathroom still looks more familiar than the Great Hall. Standing on these ancient stones, staring at her reflection in the broken mirror, she feels like she's eleven again. It's not a pleasant feeling.

She hates Voldemort and she's glad he's dead, she tells herself fiercely and knows in the telling that it's true. She knew it had to end like this, wouldn't have had it any other way. She never thought once, in the years since he's come back, that she didn't want Voldemort dead.

If only Harry hadn't called him Tom.

That word, that name, on Harry's lips of all people – that name, Tom, made her think. For it isn't just Voldemort that's dead, it's Tom Riddle too, Tom the lonely orphan who felt out of place at Hogwarts, Tom who was embarrassed by his patched secondhand clothes, Tom who didn't have anyone who understood him.

Tom who was her only friend her first year. Tom who she'd told everything to, who'd confided in her in turn. And though she knows that he manipulated her, crept his way into her heart so he could get to Harry, she also knows that the things he said were true – Hermione told her what Harry saw in Dumbledore's pensieve, and it all fits, all matches up.

And she still can't help but feel sorry for, feel a strange kinship to that friendless teenager in threadbare robes.

She stares angrily at her reflection as the tears spill over and her face grows blotchy.

If only Harry hadn't called him Tom.

* * *

Please review!!


	2. Narcissa

**Dirge**

**Chapter Two: Narcissa**

She will mourn Bellatrix, of course. But later, when she has time to think about all Bellatrix has meant to her – because although Bellatrix is her sister, her childhood partner-in-crime, she has also hurt her family, left Lucius at the Department of Mysteries to be taken to Azkaban, made Narcissa's house echo with Draco's screams. Her loyalty to her son is greater than her loyalty to her sister, and a small, vindictive part of her is actually glad that Bellatrix is dead.

The greater part of her knows that she is devastated at Bella's death, but she won't admit that now, not in front of so many blood traitors, so many Mudbloods. They would love to see her bent over Bellatrix's body, placed in a side chamber with the Dark Lord's and so many others'. Rodolphus. Rabastan. Antonin. For all that these men have hurt her family, they are the only friends she has. Had.

She cannot cry for Death Eaters, here in Hogwarts' Great Hall with so many heroes cheering and laughing around her. The clusters of people that sit at the long tables, heads bent together in grief, are mourning the glorious dead. Most prominent are the Weasley family: their bright hair would make them stand out even if the sheer number of them didn't. Vaguely, Narcissa wonders if she hates Molly Weasley for killing Bella, even as she acknowledges that the other woman has lost people to Death Eaters, and her brothers (Narcissa knows) in part to Bellatrix.

Harry Potter, who is sitting with the Weasleys, between the girl and the youngest boy, notices her staring and nods guardedly at her. Narcissa feels a thrill of combined triumph and embarrassment – he acknowledges what he owes her, and she knows he alone will keep her family out of Azkaban – but he caught her staring at him like an awe-struck child.

Narcissa looks quickly away from Potter to the staff table, where the bodies of the fallen heroes lie in some sort of horrid tribute. She glances over the Weasley boy, the Bones girl, and a few other students (she grips Draco's hand instinctively as she notes the sheer number of children there – with a borrowed wand, he could so easily have been lying among them – but no, he would not be among them, they would have put him in the other room, with the Dark Lord and Bellatrix, both of whom Draco fears). She notices the shabby robes and longish hair of Remus Lupin, who she recognizes from her Hogwarts days, and next to him lies –

Her.

Nymphadora Tonks. The niece Narcissa never met, never saw except for a few pictures stolen from the Ministry, where Lucius's influence once allowed her free access to all sorts of files. It was how she found out about Nymphadora's existence, when her own pregnancy nearly drove her insane with wondering if Andromeda had any children.

Nymphadora. Narcissa wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the name, to love her sister or to hate her for it. Nymphadora had been Cissy's and Andie's favorite name (Bella had hated it), and the name of countless dolls, stuffed animals, and a cat. When she was seven, Cissy had campaigned to name a new house elf Nymphadora, but not even Andie had agreed to that.

She wasn't sure then – and still isn't sure now – if the name was a tribute to the Black sisters or a slap on the face, Andie taking yet another thing from her little sister. Or even if Andromeda was playing with fate, trying to make sure that Nymphadora Tonks and Nymphadora Malfoy would notice their shared name and become friends at Hogwarts.

But Narcissa's baby was a boy and there were no others. Bellatrix looked too jealously at the one she had.

In death, Nymphadora looks nothing like the pictures in the Ministry files: her Apparition license, an article from the Daily Prophet about the newest Aurors, a brochure offering tips on Stealth. Her skin is too pale, her mouth is slack, her body stiller than it has ever been in photographs.

Now that it is safe to think such thoughts, Narcissa admits to herself that she would have liked to have known this half-blood niece of hers, this wife of a werewolf. She never noticed before, but Nymphadora's heart-shaped face is a softer version of Narcissa's own.

When Andromeda arrives, Narcissa decides suddenly, I will try to get her to be my sister again. Andie and Cissy, even with that gaping space where another name should be, would be better than the two of us apart. It's too late for me to know Nymphadora, but Andie could know Draco.

And I could know her grandson, Nymphadora's daughter. Teddy.

She knows she doesn't deserve what she's planning, her sister come back to her, a grand-nephew (Merlin, but that makes her sound old!) to dote on. A safety net in case Potter decides to forget what happened in the forest. But Narcissa is a Slytherin, and she has never cared much about what she deserves. She sees what she wants and she takes what she can.

So instead of weeping for Bella and Rodolphus and Rabastan and the others, Narcissa pulls Draco tight against her and begins to cry for Nymphadora Tonks.

* * *

_Please review!_


	3. Neville

**Dirge**

**Chapter Three: Neville**

It is four days before he is able to get more than five minutes to himself. He is constantly surrounded by people – friends, strangers, people he vaguely recognizes but who casually sling their arms around his shoulders and call him "Nev." It makes him nervous – his hands are continuously sweaty and he stammers over every other word. Nobody seems to notice much; they stare at him the way Hermione once stared at Lockhart.

More than ever, he is glad that he is not Harry.

The questions they ask. What is he going to do after Hogwarts, how many O.W.L.s did he get, what is his favorite subject. What sort of clubs is he in. Who is his girlfriend. Has he ever had a girlfriend.

(He hasn't. At seventeen, he's never even been kissed. Several girls - two sixth-year Hufflepuffs and a fourth-year Gryffindor - have begun following him around, batting their eyelashes hopefully, and one time Romilda Vane lunges for him and he turns away so that her lips bruise his cheek. It's silly, he knows, and Dean and Seamus tease him for it, but he doesn't want to kiss _them. _They only like him because he's famous, and a year ago they looked at him in disgust and giggled whenever he did anything wrong – on the Hogwarts Express last year Romilda Vane told Harry that he didn't have to sit with losers like Neville and Luna. Hermione beams at Neville when he says this, and gives Harry a significant look).

The thing is, a year ago he didn't have to be ashamed of his answers, of his lack of experience, of his mistakes. Well, that's not quite true – he _was_ ashamed of them, embarrassed to be so stupid at school, vividly aware that he was the only seventh-year Gryffindor whose sum total of romantic experience was a pity date to the Yule Ball in his fourth year. But last year it didn't matter, because no one was surprised at the answers. He was Neville Longbottom – it was expected of him.

And now he can't even go to the loo without strangers coming up to shake his hand, can't go to the greenhouses without a pack of giggling girls following him, can't even firecall his gran without feeling eyes on the back of him, bent over with his head in the fire. Luna tells him matter-of-factly that one of them took a photo of his bum.

Neville will never understand girls.

And the thing is that now he has something to live up to, some sort of collective idea of what Neville Longbottom should be, formed when he cut the head off You-Know-Who's snake, and he isn't at all like _that _Neville Longbottom. He isn't _Harry. _He doesn't have a pretty girlfriend, doesn't get good grades, isn't good at Quidditch or Defense or anything really, besides Herbology, and nobody cares much about that.

Sometimes, secretly, he wishes that it had been someone else – if not Harry or Ron or Hermione, then Seamus or Dean or Oliver Wood, someone _cooler - _who stood up to You-Know-Who. Not that he regrets it, he doesn't, but it wasn't bravery exactly – with You-Know-Who saying those things, he just had to do what he did. It was as if someone else was controlling his body, controlling his words, and sometimes he thinks that maybe it was. Maybe it was his dad.

He doesn't regret doing what he did. He just wishes he had been able to do it without so many people _watching. _

So, when Neville finally gets some time to himself – a gray and rainy morning when he is the first of the seventh-year Gryffindor boys to wake up (they have taken to sleeping in their old dorm room again, it lets them pretend that Hogwarts is still itself) he takes refuge in the bathroom for an hour. He does what he came in there to do – use the toilet, shower, brush his teeth – but for the forty-five minutes after that, he stands in front of the mirror, staring at himself. He still looks like Neville Longbottom, Slug Club reject, always the last to find a partner in DA meetings. Neville Longbottom, who once accidentally transplanted his own ears onto a cactus.

He cannot see, in his too-round face, in the scar above his eyebrow from being beaten up by Crabbe and Goyle first year, in the crooked teeth that make him nervous to smile, any hint of the hero that everyone else sees. He wishes they didn't expect him to be that hero.

Staring at his reflection, Neville misses the _old _Neville, the useless, clumsy, forgetful Neville. He was happy being the old Neville – not at first, but by the end of fifth year he was. He had friends (not many, but enough), a subject he was passionate about, and he never had to take another Potions lesson again. He liked the idea of girls, sure, but in reality they scared him, and it was really kind of a relief not to have to deal with them.

Now, he hasn't been able to talk to Harry or Ron or Hermione or Luna or Ginny without flashbulbs going off in his face, when he tells people that his favorite subject is Herbology they giggle and say "No, what is it really?", and Romilda Vane is waiting for the moment she can force a kiss on him.

He wants to go back to being the old Neville, but he can't do that. He and Harry and Hermione smashed the Ministry's supply of Time-Turners, for one thing. Mass Obliviation of wizards is illegal, for another. He'll just have to deal with the disappointed looks on everyone's faces when they find out who Neville Longbottom _really_ is.

Dean is yelling for him to hurry up. Neville forces a smile at his reflection, showing crooked teeth, then turns away and leaves the bathroom for Dean.


	4. Luna

**A/N:**_ Okay, this chapter needs an explanation. _

_First, it's connected to my oneshot "Like a Lethifold." You absolutely do not have to have read that to understand this chapter, but if you like this chapter, you should go check it out! (Yes, I'm shameless)._

_Second, this oneshot combines some non-canon ideas I've been thinking about making a story or two out of – my ideas about Bellatrix's past (mainly, me coming up with answers to the questions Why didn't she have children? What was her relationship with Voldemort? Did she really love Rodolphus?) as well as my ideas about Luna (What are her relationships with and feelings for Dean and Neville? What happened the day her mother died? What happened at Malfoy Manor, and how would Luna recover?). Hopefully this won't be too non-canon (it's not AU because it doesn't contradict any canon material, but I'm working in plenty of my own ideas)._

_Third, I'd love to hear your ideas about what, if anything, I should expand from this chapter into a longer fic – I'm playing with a few ideas but haven't even outlined anything yet, so I'd appreciate any input on that front. _

_Okay, sorry for that long intro! Here's Luna's chapter:_

_

* * *

  
_

**Dirge**

**Chapter Four: Luna**

3:00 AM finds her still awake, alone in the Ravenclaw common room full of people. Cho Chang and Michael Corner are sprawled together on one of the long couches, Michael's arm heavily bandaged and Cho's whole left side a scabbed-over mess. As Luna watches, Cho twitches in her sleep and Michael unconsciously pulls her closer against his chest. Cho immediately stills, a slight smile creeping across her face, even in sleep.

Luna half-wonders what it would be like to be loved like that. It makes her think of Dean for some reason, though nothing has happened yet and she knows it is foolish to think that anything will. They have shared smiles and conversations and early morning cups of cocoa after they are both awoken by nightmares, but that was at Shell Cottage and now they are at Hogwarts, where Dean is again a handsome, popular seventh-year and she is only Loony Lovegood. It is far easier to believe in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks than it is to believe in her and Dean.

Dean doesn't understand her, anyway, she tells herself as she shifts in her purple sleeping bag, one of the hundreds Professor McGonagall conjured for those staying at Hogwarts. For a moment there is a tight pressure against her throat and she can't breathe, and then she notices her butterbeer cork necklace caught in the zipper. She frees it but does not take it off; instead she twines the string around her fingers and holds it close against her heart. She has not taken this necklace off since she was captured what she knows was only a few months ago, though it feels like she lived for years in that dark, damp cellar. There are too many memories strung on the necklace, memories of her mother who helped her make it (Luna has kept all the nonsensical jewelry they made together, the Dirigible Plum earrings and the sunflower headband, magically preserved in hopes of keeping her memories of mother the same way), her father who uncorked the bottles and helped her drink them, Luna giggling and hiccupping as together they made their way through bottle after bottle "in the interest of art," as he said.

And Bellatrix, who is the only person who ever asked her about the necklace.

She hates that she thinks of her as Bellatrix, not as Bellatrix Lestrange. Her thoughts and feelings about Bellatrix are so tangled and complicated – hate and horror, fascination and admiration, fear and something more, some feeling she is too frightened to consider in case it might be love.

She knows she should hate Bellatrix. The first time she saw her, Luna watched as Bellatrix tortured Neville, killed Sirius Black, and taunted Harry. She's seen both Harry and Neville hurt and lost over what Bellatrix took from them. In September, after Neville's first detention with the Carrows, she held him as he cried in anger and sorrow because of what Bellatrix did to his parents. She knows she should hate Bellatrix Lestrange. She knows she should be elated at her death, she should be dancing over her body in the antechamber off the Great Hall, she should give Mrs. Weasley a bouquet of mandrake leaves (an ancient symbol of victory, for Gernumblies) as a token of her thanks.

And yet…

And yet she isn't happy that Bellatrix is dead. What she feels for Bellatrix in death is just as complicated as what she felt for her in life. Alone in the dark, she struggles to name its parts. Anger. Shock. Regret. Relief.

And sorrow, mostly sorrow. Grief.

"I miss her," Luna whispers to the dark, and her eyes burn at the admission. _Tears will keep the nargles away, _some small part of her thinks, but she isn't comforted.

The truth is she misses Bellatrix, that voice in the darkness, that jagged mind brushing against hers, tugging at her memories. Those questions she asked and the way she listened, as if she really, truly cared. And those confidences, those terrible secrets that Luna now keeps buried deep inside herself. The secrets didn't die with Bellatrix, and now Luna has to carry them alone.

For the things Bellatrix confided in her, Luna knows, rationally, that Bellatrix deserved to die. But despite being in Ravenclaw, Luna has never been one for rationality.

Nobody ever trusted her like that before. Nobody thought to really look at her, look beyond the straggly hair and the radish earrings and _the Quibbler_, look straight through Loony to see Luna hiding underneath.

Oh, Ginny's gotten close. Harry and Neville too, and sometimes even Hermione. But never completely. Some small part of them still stares at the wand stuck behind Luna's ear or her feet bare beneath her school robes.

Not like Bellatrix.

"We're so alike, you and I," Bellatrix used to say, in her harsh voice that always teetered on the edge of laughter. "We're so alike, you could be my daughter."

And Bellatrix tells her of the baby-that-wasn't, the tiny suggestion of a possibility, an heir to the Dark Lord. That the Dark Lord wanted no heir, that he demanded that she get rid of it. That Rodolphus helped her and she married him after, out of trust and gratitude and something that grew into love.

That the possibility of other possibilities was gone with the baby-that-wasn't.

And Bellatrix makes Luna talk about her mother-that-isn't, the color of her eyes and the sound of her voice already lost, unable to be kept whole with the Dirigible Plum earrings and butterbeer cork necklace. The way she died, the way Luna saw her, mistaking blood for Gurdyroot juice and losing precious seconds in confusion.

"We killed them," Bellatrix says, her voice trembling into laughter or tears or hysteria. "We killed them, and now we have each other instead."

The lessons. The house elves. Legilimency, Occlumency. The Cruciatus. The knife. Luna knows she should hate her for it, but there is something in the memories, something about Bellatrix that makes outright hate impossible (for she hates her, surely she does [she must]. But it is not pure hate, not the way Neville feels about Bellatrix Lestrange, but hate mixed with so many other feelings, inseparable as a blended potion).

Luna never felt so valued as she did in those dark damp hours in the cellar of Malfoy Manor, when Mr. Ollivander was locked in a cursed sleep and her father and her friends were far away. She never felt so loved.

Bellatrix is gone. Her jailer, her torturer, her teacher. Her mother – no, not that, for even in death Luna's mother is still her mother, and Luna will not take that title from her. Her stepmother. That is better, with the word wicked in unseen brackets before it.

"I miss you," Luna whispers shamefully to the dark. She considers asking her mother, her real mother, to welcome Bellatrix, to befriend her (she often talks to her mother, and sometimes even thinks she hears or dreams an answer). But she knows it's wrong, knows she can't let herself want that, so Luna only bites a cork on her necklace and lets her tears soak her pillow (at least there will be no nargles in Ravenclaw tonight, a small part of her thinks cheeringly). She doesn't know why she's crying, doesn't know how to stop, doesn't know how to articulate that complicated mess of emotions that comes with the thought of Bellatrix. She shouldn't think about her, she knows, but it's so hard not to when it feels like all her memories have been stained by Bellatrix's dark eyes. She doesn't know how to separate herself from Bellatrix, how to get back to the Luna-that-was.

The only thing she knows is she can never tell anyone what happened at Malfoy Manor.

* * *

_Please review!_


	5. Myrtle

**_A/N: _**_This one is a bit of a stretch to fit the theme, but I had fun writing it and I decided to stick it in._

**Dirge**

**Chapter Five: Myrtle**

Ghosts can't cast a jinx or even land a punch, but they do their part at the Battle of Hogwarts all the same. Led by Nearly Headless Nick, the Hogwarts ghosts float through dueling Death Eaters, distracting them at crucial moments. More than once, Myrtle sees the ghost of a Death Eater rise out of his corpse while Nick is still hovering above. Invariably, the new ghosts take one look at him and scram.

All this death and destruction – it's more fun than Myrtle has had in years. She takes note of a few unflappable Death Eaters who have the strength of mind to ignore Myrtle's arms and legs going through their heads. If they survive the battle, she's going to haunt them. (She doesn't know why more ghosts don't haunt a specific person – at Olive Hornby's brother's wedding Myrtle had the time of her, er, death.)

But Myrtle can think of an outcome of the battle that would be even more enjoyable than haunting a Death Eater: finding someone to share her toilet with. There's Harry Potter, who she got to know five years ago but who hasn't visited recently (shame), and Draco Malfoy, who she became great friends with last year.

Myrtle worries that Harry will be less attractive as a ghost, with those brilliant green eyes faded to pearly transparency. Draco's so pale, he could be a ghost already, he won't look much different once he's dead - in fact, as a ghost might be even more gorgeous than he is now. But if Harry dies and comes to live with her, then Myrtle will be famous by extension…she just can't decide which boy she'd rather have in her toilet. Well, she'll take what she can get, and if they both die, she'll share with both.

After the last Death Eaters have been run off the grounds, Myrtle zooms to the Great Hall, where she hovers over the rows of bodies, searching for Draco and Harry. She notices a crowd of jubilant people gathered around a single point. Curious, she floats to the ceiling, looks down, and sees Harry. So he survived, she realizes with a stab of disappointment. Oh well, there's still Draco.

But his body isn't with the others, neither on the staff table with the heroes nor in the side chamber with the Death Eaters. Myrtle hovers around the Great Hall, studying every face, until finally she spots Draco sitting with two adults so pearlescent that they must be his parents. He survived too!

With a wail of rage and disappointment, Myrtle rushes straight to her bathroom and spends the next week in Hogwarts' plumbing, making toilets all over the castle overflow.


	6. Andromeda

**Dirge**

**Chapter Six: Andromeda**

Andromeda avoids mirrors, those first few days after the battle, because she knows that she has never looked more like Bellatrix. Hogwarts's shadows taint her hair and eyes to Bella's black, and she has gone mad with loss.

Bellatrix killed Nymphadora. Her sister killed her daughter. Bella killed her little girl.

More than loss, she's mad with hate, though she won't admit it because she knows it makes her too much a Black. If Ted or Nymphadora were here they would tell her what she's becoming, would save her from herself. But they're gone, and maybe (probably) the better part of herself is gone with them.

One day (she's lost track of days since she came to Hogwarts, since she saw that black-lettered newspaper with its alphabetical list of the dead [she looked under T first, she looked under T and she almost cried with relief before she remembered to look under L]) Molly tells her the Death Eaters' bodies will be burned in the morning. She doesn't know what makes her do it, but she gives Teddy to Harry and, on a foolish, reckless whim that Ted would have talked her out of, decides. She will see Bella – Bella's body – one last time.

She waits until night, when Hogwarts' scarred corridors fall as close to silent as they ever get, then makes her way by wandlight through the empty passages, past the table in the Great Hall that bears the linen-draped bodies of Nymphadora and Remus and so many others, and finally into the small antechamber which holds those who died on the wrong side.

The room is crowded with corpses, more like a mausoleum than the funeral parlor the Great Hall has become. Andromeda has to bend low to examine the faces, but there are too many bodies and before long her back is sore and she needs to rest (she is old now, a widow [the word has always made her think of ancient, bent-over women draped in black], a – what is the opposite of orphan? Is there a word for a parent who has lost a child?).

Prompted by hate and her aching back, she pushes a Death Eater's legs off one of the sofas that line the walls. She sits down, but his knees are too close to hers and she shines her wand at his face.

It's Voldemort. She shudders and laughs at the same time, but stops quickly, for her laugh is not her own. Bellatrix has taken even that.

Without really thinking about it, Andromed raises her wand and, with a silent Hover Charm, moves Voldemort's body off the couch. She lets it drop, and it lands with a thud and a gasp.

The gasp hasn't come from her, and even Voldemort's voice isn't high enough to make such a feminine sound.

There is somebody else alive in this room full of corpses. Andromeda shines her wand at the corner where she thinks the gasp originated.

Now it's her turn to gasp: her wand illuminates a very familiar face, with deathly pale skin, vacant black eyes, and a mouth still arranged in an expression of amusement. The face is not lying on the ground, as would be normal for a corpse, but is suspended at Andromeda's waist level, as if sitting up.

Her first thought is an Inferius. _"Flagrante!"_ she shouts instinctively, and her wand emits a line of fire.

"_Aguamenti!"_ a voice cries in return, and a jet of water meets her fire in midair, extinguishing it. But Bellatrix's arms have not moved from their position, slumped uselessly against her body: she is only a corpse, not an Inferius after all.

Andromeda moves her wand, sending Bellatrix's head, with its masses of black curls, lolling to one side. It hangs forward at an unnatural angle, so that Bellatrix looks like a broken doll. Behind Bellatrix, still half-concealed by those unruly curls, is (she should have known, should have recognized her voice) Narcissa. Her wand is still pointing at Andromeda, but in her other hand, held against Bellatrix's drooping head, is a hairbrush.

"Andie!" says the Narcissa. She lowers her wand, but not the brush. Somehow Andromeda thinks the reverse would have made her feel more comfortable.

"Narcissa," says Andromeda. They stare at each other across Bellatrix's corpse, with its empty eyes and limp limbs, with its laughing face and wild hair. Ted would have said something about the symbolism of the moment and made Andromeda laugh at his literary pretensions, but Ted is gone and Andromeda doesn't care much for symbolism anymore.

"What are you doing?" Andromeda says.

Narcissa's cheeks redden but she meets Andromeda's eyes defiantly. "I'm brushing Bella's hair," she says. "I'm getting her ready for her funeral tomorrow."

"She's not having a funeral," says Andromeda bluntly, with a sort of perverse pleasure that makes her hate herself, though not enough to stop. "Her body's being disposed of with the others." She gestures with her wand, lighting Voldemort's chalky face. _"Disposed of,"_ Andromeda repeats viciously, watching Cissy bite her lip. "Like the animal she i- was."

Narcissa stares at Andromeda; for a moment the blazing look in her eyes reminds her of Bellatrix, and Andromeda unconsciously grips her wand tighter, preparing to combat the curse that must surely come. But then Narcissa looks away, back at Bellatrix's lolling head. She rights it carefully and began to run the brush through her hair in long, deliberate strokes.

"I know – I know that Bella - " Narcissa starts uncertainly, then shakes her head and starts over. "Andie, she hurt me too," she says pleadingly, sounding again like the little girl of twelve she was the last time they spoke. "She tortured Draco, turned the Dark Lord against Lucius and me – Andie, I'm almost glad she's dead." The brush pauses for a moment; Narcissa's skin has paled almost to Bellatrix's pallor, and her eyes are wide in shock at what she just admitted.

"But I'm not," Narcissa continues, stronger. "Whatever she was in the end, whatever Azkaban and the Dark Lord turned her into, somewhere inside she was still Bella. She was still my sister…our sister."

She resumes brushing, still not looking at Andromeda.

"You wouldn't be saying that if she had killed Lucius and Draco," Andromeda says harshly, gripping her wand so hard that her hand begins to ache.

Narcissa raises her head; her eyes are brimming with tears. "I know," she whispers. "I know, Andie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what she did to you. For what – for what I did."

With her radiant blond hair, watery blue eyes, and delicately trembling lower lip, Narcissa looks for all the world like a repentant angel. What is she expecting, a tearful embrace, an assurance that all will be forgotten and forgiven?

"Andie," Narcissa says, her voice trembling. "Andie, I want to be your sister again. I want to know your grandson. I want you to know my family. Will you forgive me?"

Andromeda stares at her. She still hasn't put down the brush.

"Give me back my husband and child," Andromeda says in a voice that is too harsh to be her own, "and then I will." She turns away from Narcissa and retreats across the room, stepping carefully around the scattered bodies. At the door she looks back.

Narcissa has leaned Bellatrix's body against herself, and she is still slowly, meticulously brushing those wild black curls. Narcissa never brushed Bella's hair before – by the time Narcissa was old enough to want to, Bellatrix was vain enough to keep her away. Narcissa, with her long straight hair, doesn't know how to brush curls. Despite all Cissy's intentions, Bella's hair is becoming more and more unruly. Cissy is so hopeless that Andromeda almost goes back to set her right.

She ignores the impulse, leaves the room, and closes the door behind her. She sets back across the Great Hall (past the sheet-draped body of her Nymphadora, her little girl), and does not regret it. Still, somewhere in the back of her mind she can hear Dumbledore harping on about love and forgiveness and second chances.

She ignores him. Her husband and her daughter – her only child, her baby Nymphadora – are dead, murdered by Bellatrix. Bellatrix's body will be burned tomorrow (those white hands that helped comb Andie's hair, those toenails that Andie used to paint bright red, those lips that whispered so many childish secrets) and good riddance.

_Good riddance, good riddance_, she thinks in rhythm as she makes her way up countless staircases back to Gryffindor Tower (she had been in Slytherin, but Slytherin is empty now). She is exhausted by the time she has reached her bed, some absent first year's four poster, and she falls asleep almost immediately.

She dreams of the time she was six and Bella broke her favorite doll.

In the morning she stands in the forest with the Aurors and feels the heat of Fiendfyre and smells burning death. Not even the thick grey smoke can make her eyes water, and across the clearing Andie can see Narcissa, clutching Lucius's hand but with a face as blank and impassive as Andromeda's own.

Andromeda stays until the ground is covered only in ashes.


	7. Lucius

_**A/N:**__ In case you've forgotten, Sturgis Podmore is the Order member that Lucius finds under an invisibility cloak, Imperiuses, and has arrested and sent to Azkaban. JKR doesn't say that Sturgis dies in DH. But then, she doesn't say he DOESN'T die, either. I also took a few liberties with the Imperius Curse, but JKR only shows us Harry's POV as a caster, and he does it horribly. I think that casting would take a little more than what Harry does in Gringotts. _

**Dirge**

**Chapter Seven: Lucius**

It is strange how close the Imperius Curse can make you feel to somebody. That's something they don't teach you at Hogwarts, nor at Durmstrang, nor even at those Death Eater training sessions he attended when he was seventeen, eighteen. They don't tell you how you half-live in the other person's mind, learning their lives so as to properly control them, how the blank space from which you make your commands sometimes brushes against the living thoughts of the victim, closer than Legilimency. How you might come to regard your victim not as a friend, because friends don't obey you unquestioningly, but fondly, as a small child, or a pet.

Which is why Lucius Malfoy is somewhat sorry to recognize the thick blond hair of Sturgis Podmore, who is lying dead on the staff table.

He and Sturgis have never spoken, but somehow he feels connected to him – in his thoughts, he even calls him Sturgis instead of Podmore. Sturgis has preceded him in so many things – failing the Dark Lord (albeit unknowingly on Sturgis's part), getting arrested for breaking into the Department of Mysteries, rotting away in Azkaban. His and Sturgis's similarities have become so prominent that Lucius would not be surprised to learn that he himself will die a few months from now.

They even had the same cell in Azkaban – Lucius knows, because it was his influence that placed Sturgis in such a high-security cell, which itself had once been Antonin Dolohov's, who (Lucius knows from his journeys through Sturgis's memories) killed Sturgis's father.

Lucius has always had a taste for irony. So, it seems, does life.

The Dark Lord ordered Lucius to keep Sturgis under the Imperius Curse for as long as he could, which meant that Lucius had to occasionally go through Sturgis's recent memories, which consisted entirely of iron bars, smooth black walls, and an increasingly unhinged feeling of despair. Eventually Sturgis's mind became so fractured that it was impossible to hold the Imperius any longer. But even after the curse was broken, the sight of monotonous walls and the sound of screaming haunted Lucius's subconscious, surfacing in dreams. In hindsight, it feels like foreshadowing.

His own year in Azkaban, staring at those same unbreakable walls, trying to keep from screaming, Lucius began to feel the slightest twinge of guilt for what he had done to Sturgis. After all, without Lucius's influence, Sturgis would have been placed in a cell with less security, would have faced only the occasional dementor. Without Lucius, he wouldn't have been there in the first place.

So after the battle is over, after he finds Narcissa and Draco and his wife tells him what she did in the forest, assures him that they were safe and he is never going back to Azkaban, implores him to begin making the right sort of connections _now_, Lucius considers, in some small corner of his mind, actually speaking to Sturgis Podmore. It's doubtful that Sturgis will place Lucius – they never saw each other (Lucius recognizes Sturgis from photographs and from Strugis's own reflection in the mirror, gleaned during the time their minds were so connected) so Sturgis need never know that Lucius Imperiused him. They could be – well, not friends, because Sturgis is a half-blood, but friendly.

But Sturgis is dead. And Lucius has been inside his mind, still carries some of Sturgis's half-thoughts and memories. It's an odd feeling, but he ignores it with expert grace. Sturgis is far from the first person he has Imperiused, far from the first person he's Imperiused who's been killed.

Still, as he sits with his wife and son at the end of what used to be the Slytherin table, Lucius's eyes and thoughts occasionally stop to dwell on the square jaw, the light freckles, the thick blond hair of Sturgis Podmore.


	8. Harry

**Dirge**

**Chapter Eight: Harry**

He doesn't miss the war, doesn't miss Voldemort, doesn't miss all those years of violence and paranoia and panic and loss. He doesn't miss it, _he doesn't_. But still, in the hours and days and weeks after the battle, he can't help but think (though he won't say it, he won't be that selfish, that callous):

_What the fuck is he supposed to do with his life now?_

It turns out he _is_ that selfish, though by eighteen he has learned a little tact: a few months later he voices the thought to Ginny, and she laughs at him and says, "That's what it's like for the rest of us, Harry. That's what it means to be just out of Hogwarts. Do you think any of us has _any_ idea what we're doing with the rest of our lives?"

He knows he always said he wanted to be normal, but he can't help but wish that Trelawney would make another prophecy about him, give his life a new, clear, plainly stated purpose. All this _freedom_, this _uncertainty_, is more frightening than any Death Eater ever was.

Sometimes he thinks he should have extended the Horcrux hunt by, oh, eighty years or so.

Sometimes he wishes (not daydreams, not imagines, not wonders what life would be like if, but actually, knowingly, deliberately _wishes_) that Voldemort would come back.

He won't tell Ginny (but maybe, in the coming months or years, he will).

(He hopes that when he does, she'll laugh).

* * *

_**A/N:**__ Because I have no idea what I am doing with the rest of my life._

_This is the best I'm going to get for Harry; sorry, but I find it really hard to write him! I'm working on a few longer chapters that I'm excited about so I figured I'd stick Harry in now to break it up a little._

_Oh yeah, and __**please review.**_


	9. Dean

**_A/N: _**_Dean, as suggested by Xx starlight-moon xX. Again, this is kind of stretching the theme, but I like it and I hope you do too!_

_Oh, and I don't have my copy of Deathly Hallows available right now so I hope I'm not contradicting any canon here. I checked everything with HP Lexicon, but I apologize in advance if there are any mistakes._

_

* * *

_

**Dirge**

**Chapter Eight: Dean**

_September of sixth year, History of Magic, back row._

"Hey Dean."

"What."

"If you had to choose, who would you do?"

"Aren't we getting a little old for this, Seamus?"

"Sixteen? Nah. We can be stupid, horny teenagers for another year."

"Fine," Dean says. At least this will be more interesting than goblin wars. "Who am I choosing between?"

"Millicent Bulstrode. Eloise Midgen. Or…Loony Lovegood."

Dean groans. "Not fair."

"Choose!" Seamus whispers, gloating.

"Fine…Eloise Midgen. She's not that bad…if you put a bag over her head."

"I've always known you had a thing for Midgen," Seamus says, laughing.

"Shuddup," Dean growls, hitting Seamus. Binns, of course, takes no notice. "My turn. Marietta Edgecomb, Pansy Parkinson, or Moaning Myrtle."

* * *

_March, or maybe April. What should have been his seventh year. Shell Cottage._

He has not been inside a house in months, and he is alarmed to find how claustrophobic the indoors now makes him. His ears ring from the sounds of too many voices and he flinches every time someone brushes against him, but he forces himself to stay inside, to stay with Griphook because everyone else is busy with Hermione. And then they go outside to bury the house-elf, and Dean realizes that it's not the house that bothers him, but the people. There's only seven of them standing around the grave, but that's more people than Dean has seen in six months.

He thinks for half a moment of last year, of Hogwarts' crowded corridors and the bleachers during Quidditch, and more than ever he hates the Death Eaters for doing this to him.

He tries to stay inside, tries to deny what they've made him into, but after a few hours he's tired of fighting his splitting headache. When Bill and Fleur aren't looking, he sneaks out the back door and into the dead garden. Almost instantly his headache lessens; he breathes in the early morning air and suddenly he can't get far enough away from the house. He begins walking, almost running, to the edge of the garden.

He opens the gate and stops short. There's a body in the yard.

For an instant he is frozen; images flash through his mind, and guilt, and a weak justification that he has thought out a thousand times and prays he will never have to say (_we had to leave him, we would've been killed too if we hadn't, we had to leave him, I'm sorry Mrs. Tonks I'm so sorry)._

But it's only Luna Lovegood, dressed in ragged black robes that now only vaguely resemble her school uniform. Her hair, spread out over the muddy ground, is dull and limp, and her buggy eyes are squinting against the daylight.

She doesn't acknowledge him, just continues lying there, staring at nothing – or maybe, Dean realizes suddenly, at the sky. He tilts his head back to check for cloud animals, but the sky is only its usual drab gray.

"What are you doing?" he asks cautiously; this is Loony Lovegood, and though last year's History of Magic class seems a century away, some small part of him can't forget that talking to her is social suicide.

"Looking at the sky," Luna says serenely.

"Oh," Dean says, and simply stands there, feeling stupid. He's about to leave when she suddenly continues.

"It's big, isn't it?" she says conversationally, still staring at the sky.

"Er – yes."

"I'd forgotten how big it is," Luna muses, and with a jolt Dean remembers that dark, dank cellar in Malfoy Manor. He was there for less than an hour, but he knows that he will never forget it.

He sits down next to Luna, never mind the mud soaking through his jeans.

"How long were you there for?"

She blinks up at him. "I don't know, really – we didn't have any way of keeping time. Not even the Wrackspurts came regularly. Do you know what month it is?"

Dean realizes with a start that he doesn't know either – he says so, but then he looks at the ground, at the sky, and guesses. "It must be March, or maybe April – it's nearly spring."

"Maybe," Luna agrees. "Or maybe Winklies have visited this garden – they speed up time, you know."

And though she continues with her explanation of creatures that he knows aren't real, he can't really laugh at her any more. He can't think of Luna locked up in that dark room with only Mr. Ollivander for company and laugh at her. So he lies down next to her, stares up at the uniformly gray sky, and tries to find the beauty Luna sees there (he can't see it, but somehow knowing that someone can, even if that someone is only Loony Lovegood, is enough).

* * *

_2 May 1998. Hogwarts, after the Battle._

He loses sight of her in the midst of the battle and it is not until it's over and he catches a glimpse of the sunlight on her hair in the Great Hall that he realizes how worried he was. She is with Harry and Ron and Hermione and Neville and he knows he will not be able to press through the crowd to reach her. So he stays with Seamus and every so often he looks for her through gaps in the crowd, which continues mobbing Neville even after Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave.

Finally he looks and can't find her, so he tells Seamus he'll be back in a bit and manages to force his way to the door. The flagstones are cracked and bloodstained, and as he crosses them he wonders who died where he's walking. The thought makes him shudder and he runs to the front door and nearly falls down the crumbling steps.

The grounds are even worse. There are holes in the grass from curses and giants' footsteps, and in some places the earth squelches with blood where he steps. He keeps his eyes fixed on a body lying near the shattered greenhouses and doesn't look down.

He knows it's Luna, but for an instant he doesn't want to go any closer. It's irrational, he knows – he saw her smiling, laughing, talking,_ living_ in the hall – but she's still, so still, as still as Colin and Professor Lupin and Susan and Fred.

"Hello, Dean," Luna says as his shadow falls over her, and he almost laughs aloud at this proof that she really is alive. She is lying flat on her back with her face to the sky - it shone orange and red this morning but already it's back to gray, and Luna is staring up at it with the strangest look on her face.

"Hi," Dean says, still breathless, and lies down next to her. Without thinking about it, he grabs her hand. "I'm glad you're okay," he says.

Luna turns and blinks at him. "Am I okay?" she wonders aloud. "Are you?"

"Well – no," Dean admits uncomfortably. "But we're alive. That's something."

Luna turns back to the sky and seems to consider this. "It's something," she agrees finally, though her voice holds none of Dean's bracing cheeriness; it is more of a statement of fact, and she says it as she might say "Ravenclaw's mascot is the eagle" or "the Ministry has an army of heliopaths."

Luna's other hand moves from her side to touch the butterbeer cork necklace lying against her chest; it's a nervous habit of hers, Dean's learned this past month at Shell Cottage. Some small part of him wishes that he didn't know this, wishes it were last year again and he could laugh about Loony Lovegood with Seamus and listen to Lavender make fun of Luna's odd jewelry. He doesn't know why he wants this, maybe because last year everyone he knew was alive and healthy, maybe because last year he didn't feel guilty for having said things about Luna, maybe because he doesn't know how to deal with how he's feeling right now (things were a lot easier when Luna was only Loony Lovegood).

Now, after the battle, with Lavender's screams still ringing in his ears and the green and red light of Unforgiveables still showing when he blinks, with Luna's hand in his and wetness soaking into his shirt that he hopes is only water and not someone's blood, with sobs and cheers coming from the castle and the smell of death and giants all around them, Dean looks at the sky and, just for a second, he sees it.

"It's big, isn't it," he says, wonder in his voice, and Luna turns to beam at him.

"It is," she agrees, and squeezes his hand.

* * *

**_Review please!_**


	10. Hermione

**Dirge**

**Chapter 10: Hermione**

She hasn't lost anybody important. She's lost people she cared about – Fred, Sirius, Professor Lupin, Professor Dumbledore – but she hasn't lost anyone she loves. Her parents, Ron, Harry, Ginny, even Lavender and Parvati, are thankfully, wonderfully _alive._

The thing about war is that it would be selfish for her to mourn. There are so many people who have it worse than she does – almost everyone, it sometimes seems. She shouldn't be feeling as lost and confused and empty as she does. In this world, where Ron and Ginny have lost their brother, where Harry's saved the world but not Sirius or Remus or Dumbledore, where Lavender's had half her skin torn off by Greyback, where Parvati still doesn't know what's happened to her parents, Hermione doesn't get to mourn. Everybody she loves is alive. She has to be strong for those (for Ron) who aren't as lucky.

She almost laughs at the thought. She's supposed to be _lucky? _She's been captured and tortured, she's seen people die, she's killed people (not with Unforgivables, but with carefully placed jinxes and curses and charms that kill more legally and more painfully than _Avada Kedevra_. She's not sure if she can use _Wingardium leviosa _or _Impedimenta _ever again).

She found out yesterday, helping Hagrid repair his hut with Ron and Harry and Ginny, that she can see thestrals now. But after the battle, there's nobody at Hogwarts who can't. Ginny said only, "Oh. So that's what they look like," and that was all anyone said about it. All Hermione is allowed to say about it.

If she were still in the Muggle world – if she had never gone to Hogwarts (she allows herself that fantasy every so often – she has not stopped having it since her first day at Hogwarts, she has never stopped wondering _what would have happened if_) – if she had not gone to Hogwarts she would never have had to drop out of school, never have been tortured, never seen someone die, never killed someone. The events of her first year – watching Ron sacrifice himself for Harry, watching Harry sacrifice himself for the world – would be completely foreign to her. Now those horrors seem like nothing compared with what she's seen this year, and the year before, and the year before.

She's not sure if she's going to tell her parents what she's seen, what she's done. She's been through more at eighteen than either of them ever will. It's a frightening thought, almost horrifying. If she had stayed a Muggle she wouldn't have had to see, to do, any of this.

She hates what this world does to people. It's made her grow up too much and too soon.

She knows it's not fair to blame the entire wizarding world for the events of these past few years. She knows there are times in Muggle history – wars, plagues, famines, droughts – when the opposite could be said, that the Muggle world made people grow up too much, too soon.

Knowing this doesn't help. When she's with Ron in the Great Hall and there's fifty dead bodies in front of her (people she knew, Fred, Professor Lupin, Colin, Susan), when she's not allowed her own feelings because Fred belongs to Ron, she can't help but imagine leaving this world – going to Australia to find her parents and never coming back.

It's too late for that, she knows. She hasn't been to Muggle school since she was eleven. She's an expert at Transfiguration and Potions and Arithmancy but she never learned calculus and she doesn't know the difference between Helium and Hydrogen. She has no Muggle education, no skills she can use in that world. And she can't leave Ron and Harry and Ginny.

Still, she can't help but think of the Hermione-that-could-have-been. And she can't help but wonder (was it the day she got her Hogwarts letter, the day she helped Harry and Ron fight the troll, the summer after she was Petrified and she still decided to go back?) when it was she died.

She's not allowed to miss her, though, any more than she's allowed to miss Fred. Nobody she loves has died, and she's not allowed to mourn.


End file.
